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“When the bloodlust set in, I hadn’t expected it—no one had,” Rainer continues. “I wasn’t taught to deal with it properly. I was young, confused, and hungry, so hungry. It hit me and I had no idea what was happening. Nothing satisfied my hunger.” He fists his hair again, shaking his head. I reach up to pull his hands away and grip them in my own. Finally, he turns to face me. The emotion on his face practically shatters me. “I killed them, Alessia. My mother and father—the man I thought was my father. I drained them of their blood. I fed on them. I was so overrun with hunger that there was no shred of morality left in me.”
His words turn my veins to ice. I knew there was a darkness inside of him, but never did I guess he murdered his only family. Dropping his hands, I scramble to put space between us.
Something deep in my gut shouts at me to comfort him, to stay close. But the logic tells me to run.
It’s the shattered expression on his face that keeps me rooted in place—my gut, and heart, beating logic.
I swallow through the thickness, watching him warily.
He was only a child, I remind myself. Only eight years old.
It doesn’t make it right, but it makes it less malicious. It wasn’t intentional.
“It was an accident?” I whisper. “Right?”
He nods slowly, guilt and shame clouding his features.
Comfort him, something inside me calls. He needs you.
There’s nothing in this moment I can say that will change the past. Nothing that can possibly ease the pain Rainer harbors. So instead, I let the invisible tug between us win, accepting the inexplicable energy that draws us together. I ignore my own misgivings and pull him to my chest and comfort him as his body silently shakes with sobs.
It’s an impossible situation. If his mother would’ve been honest, he could’ve been prepared for his true bloodline as a boy. Their deaths and his trauma could have been spared.
Her secrets tore the Iorworth family apart, leaving Rainer an orphan so young. Yet Rainer still loves her, honors her, respects her.
Only someone with an abundance of love and forgiveness in their heart is capable of doing that.
But what hurts most is that he doesn’t blame her—he blames himself.
I swallow the thickness in my throat, working to quell my trembling limbs.
After a few minutes, he swipes his palms over his face. He clears his throat. “Ken found me. He covered for me. He let me feed from him, to stave off the bloodlust. And later, when we found Fern—a lone human in Umbra, on the verge of self-induced death—we were able to help each other. I protect her from the ruthless fae. I shelter her, give her everything she needs to live in harmony, and she lets me feed.”
That explains his strange relationship with Fern. Why he houses a human. Why his mouth was on her neck. He wasn’t kissing her. He was drinking her blood.
The thought sends a shudder through me and I squirm.
“But… it’s not only human blood you crave? It’s all blood?”
Rainer sighs. “Fae blood works well enough to stave off the bloodlust, but human blood is more potent. There’s less magic diluting it.”
“So when you feed on Fern, you can, what, feed less often?”
“Yes. I’ve also trained myself to fight it over the years. But having you here—”
I hear the words he isn’t saying: having me, a human, is temptation. The worst kind.
“It’s not only the temptation of your blood that tests me. It’s—attraction. Arousal. Strong feelings of any sort that provoke the bloodlust.”
My cheeks heat at the implication.
He kneels before me, his hands on my thighs as he looks up into my face. “That’s why I pushed you away, mo róisín. To protect you. To protect myself. It dredged up so many bad memories, and I refuse to lose myself to bloodlust again.”
He killed his own mother.
His father.
He feared he would kill me too.
